U.S.-Mexico 'War On Drugs' A Failure

Editor's note: Charles Bowden is the author of 11 books,
including "Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder and Family";
"Juárez: The Laboratory of our Future"; "Some
of the Dead Are Still Breathing" and his latest, "Murder
City," about Ciudad Juarez. He is a contributing editor
of Esquire and writes for newspapers and magazines such as Harper's
and The New York Times Book Review.

Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- Last week during the day, some kids
in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, were playing soccer in a park when
a car slowed down, guys got out and executed a 13-year-old boy.
And then they drove away, unmolested in a city with 11,000 army
and police officers.

The Mexican government repeatedly states that 90 percent of
the deaths in the current drug war are of people who are dirty;
that is, criminals involved in the drug business. The killings
of reporters and of innocent women, men and children continually
belie that statement.

The child was not a cartel member in disguise. Nor were the
15 high school kids killed at a party in a small house in a poor
barrio. Their parents had made them hold the celebration of a
sports victory at home because it was too dangerous to be out
in the city.

I went to Juarez in June of 1995 and never seem to escape
the pull of the place. The city then was controlled by Amado
Carrillo Fuentes, then the head of the Juarez cartel. Drug Enforcement
Agency intelligence told me he was raking in $250 million a week.

American factories were erupting out of the ground in the
wake of the passage of NAFTA. Huge districts of shacks made out
of stolen pallets and cardboard boxes were growing faster than
the city could map. These shacks were filled with people working
full time in those American-owned factories. Murders ran around
250 a year and sometimes the cartel left bodies on the street
wrapped in yellow ribbon. Carrillo ran the city and yet his name
never appeared in the newspapers nor was mentioned on radio and
television.

I thought I'd stumbled into hell.

Now the city is dying. About 5,000 people have been slaughtered
in Ciudad Juarez in 27 months. It is a destroyed city where 25
percent of the houses are abandoned and 40 percent of the businesses
have closed. There were 2,600 murders last year and killings
are going on at a faster clip this year. At night, no one is
on the streets.

I realize that I was a fool in 1995. I had not stumbled into
hell. That was the golden age.

But one constant remains: No matter how many die in Juarez,
no matter how low the pay in the American factories, the U.S.
government insists the War on Drugs is being won and that NAFTA
is a big success.

The Mexican War on Drugs is not lost: it never seriously began.
The drug industry is an essential prop under a faltering Mexican
economy and has been so for more than 20 years, since the peso
crisis of the early 1980s. The money flows into the hands of
countless government officials, into the banking industry and
into many investments in Mexico.

More people die each day as the government of President Felipe
Calderon uses the Mexican army and the federal police to try
to get the illegal drug industry under control. Calderon was
elected by a razor-thin margin and followed the custom of Mexican
presidents by immediately making a show of force. But he badly
underestimated the power of the drug industry.

The profits are estimated by many analysts to be between $30
billion and $50 billion a year, although it's notoriously difficult
to track. But it is not a piddling sum in a country where oil
is the official highest earner of foreign currency and supplies
40 percent of the federal budget. But the oil is running out.
Calderon has publicly stated that the oil fields will be gone
in 10 years or less.

The next big earner is human flesh, the millions of Mexicans
who have fled the economic doom of their nation and send more
than $20 billion a year home from the United States. But the
recession and job losses in the U.S. have cut into that source.

Tourism ranks third in legitimate sources of money for Mexico,
but in a nation where heads keep getting lopped off, tourism
isn't thriving.

The illegal drug industry in Mexico employs hundreds of thousands
of people. No one knows the payroll, but certainly it includes
many people in the army, the 3,500 separate police forces and
the government from top to bottom.

It's difficult to make a living wage legitimately here. The
pay varies, but in Ciudad Juarez, one of the most violent cities
on Earth, the starting salary in the 400 foreign-owned factories,
mainly American, is about 40 bucks a week.

There are 500 to 900 street gangs. No one can live on the
pay offered by these factories. In a country with 50 percent
of the population living in poverty, the turnover in these plants
runs from 100 to 200 percent a year. No one can live long in
a gang -- but for a while, a kid can live well and feel that
his life is a dream of money and power.

The U.S. approach to the killings in Mexico never looks at
an economic reason, just as the consequences of our free trade
treaty (NAFTA) are never brought up.

The effects wrought by NAFTA launched one of the largest human
migrations in the world as poor Mexicans fled collapsing industry
and agriculture. Border Patrol statistics show that the number
of Mexicans entering the U.S. illegally skyrocketed within two
years of the passage of NAFTA.

We also never question our four-decades-old War on Drugs,
which has produced cheaper drugs of higher quality at lower prices
in thousands of U.S. cities and towns. It has helped create one
of the largest prison populations in the world. If our drug policy
were a ship, it would be called the Titanic.

Anyone who questions the propaganda of the U.S. government
on the violence in Mexico, on our War on Drugs or on our free
trade agreement is told to come up with a solution, some silver
bullet that instantly slays the dragon. But our policies over
the decades have created a disaster, and it will take years to
reverse the damage these acts of government have inflicted.

The time to start is now. Let's address the true and lethal
nature of Mexico's war on drugs -- one we are in part bankrolling
under the Merida Initiative to the tune of half a billion dollars
per year, often tossed into the murderous hands of many in the
Mexican army.

We need to have a public discussion of the obvious: Legalize
drugs or keep caging Americans for taking drugs -- unless of
course they are booze, tobacco or happy pills from the doctor
-- and keep financing the murders of Mexicans.

The first thing to do if we want to come clean about the slaughter
in Mexico is start smelling the coffee. We share a 1,900-mile
border. We share a history and people. At least 10 percent of
the Mexican people now live in the United States as economic
or political fugitives.

Recently, the secretaries of State, Homeland Security and
Defense flew to Mexico City and promised the Mexican government
we would continue exactly the same polices as in the past. I
have been told I should be reasonable. I am. And I expect the
same of my government. Building prisons and lending support to
a murderous war on drugs must stop, and digging deep into the
economics and politics behind the hellish state of affairs must
begin.

It's a testament to the Mexican people that no matter how
hard life is in Juarez, they seem to endure, raise families,
smile and try to create a better future. As a Mexican friend
told me, "I love Juarez, it is such a needy city."

It is poor and dangerous, a tapestry of one-story buildings.
But once you know Juarez it haunts you no matter how you try
to flee.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those
of Charles Bowden.

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